DIY Placenta Tincture by Jennifer Leigh Mayer

My placenta went home with me for baby #2 and baby #3 to encapsulate my placenta (a.k.a. "happy pills"). I started running really low with baby #3's happy pills and a friend suggested that I make a tincture that I could use if I ran out of pills and also for hormone balancing during menopause (1-3 capsules full in 8 oz. grain alcohol). Jennifer Leigh Mayer, a Placenta Alchemist with Mama Moon NYC and Brooklyn Placenta Services has shared her recipe for making your own placenta tincture.  Thanks Jennifer for this great placenta tincture tutorial!

DIY Placenta Tincture

DIY tinctures are a wonderful remedy for mothers to use during the postpartum period. Many mothers use the tincture during times of transition such as teething, weaning, change in caregiver or even travel. They are easeful to prepare, all you need is 7-10 drops of tincture in a bit of water. The effect is a gently uplifting emotional support.

This step-by-step guide will teach you everything you need to know about making a DIY Placenta Tincture after the birth of your baby. Good luck!

First thing is first: gather your supplies

To make the tincture you’ll need:

• A clean glass jar- preferably tinted and not clear (I use an 8oz glass blue bottle)
• A small tinted glass dropper bottle
• A good quality grain alcohol such as vodka
• Paper towels, chux pad or other water proof counter cover
• Disposable gloves
• A small knife
• A spray bottle
• Bleach
• A clean work space
• The placenta 

Preparation:

1. Wash your hands carefully. Clean your designated workspace and put down a chux pad or waterproof cover. Make a stack of paper towels to put the placenta on. Take the placenta out of the fridge and place on the paper towels, the baby side with the umbilical cord facing down.
2. Get your tincture bottle ready by filling the larger bottle with grain alcohol up to the shoulder of the bottle. Keep the cap off for now.
3. Push aside the membranes and wipe clean the mother’s side of the placenta. There might be some blood clots present.
4. Find a healthy looking, robust area of the placenta and trim off a piece the size of a thumbnail.
5. Place the thumbnail size piece of placenta into the prepared tincture bottle. Wait until you take your gloves off to put the cap on.
6. Return the placenta to it’s container.
7. Clean up your workstation, throwing out the paper towel and chux pad. Wash the knife with warm soap water.
8. Place a cap on the placenta tincture and a label on the bottles. Date the bottle and give the tincture a name.
9. For professional use: Make a 10% bleach solution in the spray bottle. Spray down your counters with the bleach solution. After the knife is washed, spray the knife with bleach solution too.
10. Let the placenta sit for six weeks in a cool dry place. After six weeks decant the placenta tincture from the original bottle into the dropper bottle. You can now use your tincture as needed!

Jennifer Leigh Mayer is the founder and owner of Mama Moon NYC and Brooklyn Placenta Services in New York City. She is a Licensed Massage Therapist, Professional Birth Doula, Certified Holistic Health Counselor and Placenta Alchemist.

Jennifer is unique in her approach to working with her clients, her philosophy is to support and guide her clients down their unique path of health and wellness. She recognizes that this journey of health and healing as continuous and evolving.

Jennifer graduated Magna Cum Laude from the University of Colorado at Boulder, her work has been featured in New York Magazine, Anderson Cooper’s day time talk show and Flaunt Magazine. She is currently working on her first book, The Placenta Book, about the practice and history of placenta encapsulation.

Your labor and delivery is a marathon - are you training?

http://www.ounewsbureau.com/?attachment_id=4275

My friend Liz had a midwife during her first (of three) pregnancy. Her midwife explained to her that giving birth is like running a marathon.

There is no way that you are going to have a good experience running a marathon if you just show up the day of the race and start running. If anyone has had a good experience doing this, keep it to yourself! I have ran and was glad that I trained. I hear from endless women who made little to no effort to prepare for their baby's actual birth. They planned for the nursery, the clothes, their diets, their maternity leave but completely left out the birth. I've heard pregnant women say "I'm just going to show up and get that wonderful epidural" or "my doctor is going to step me through it". I know no one in these situations who looks back on their experience as beautiful and being in control of their body. So here's the issue with those thoughts.

That epidural is usually only given during certain stages of labor. You have to be laying down and cannot move naturally to let the baby fall with gravity. Just picture which way gravity pulls. Yep, the woman's body is designed to let the baby fall vertically and not to projectile shoot horizontally. My friend Liz found herself to be in a painful position unless she was on her hands and knees. Then the pain was gone and it was just the pressure of the baby pushing out. I enjoyed laboring while dancing with my husband (actually that is the last time that I danced with him!). The epidural doesn't even alway work. I know many annoyed women who got the epidural only to find out that they could feel everything and were stuck in a bed that did not feel good to be laying in. Since it causes you to go against your body's natural flow and changes your bodies natural hormones, you are at high risk of having a longer and more complicated birth thus a longer recuperation time. All of this snowballs and causes you to have a less positive experience and less success at breastfeeding. Here are some great epidural free positions.There are many women who had to resort to epidurals during their labors but they were educated and waited until the last minute in case the baby changed positions. If they were prepared and educated then they asked their caregiver the right questions and were okay and accepting of their birth and their body. Here are some Hidden Risks of Epidurals from Mothering Magazine.

I've heard all about your great doctor that you have had since your first period. You have a vision of that caregiver by your side coaching you through every contraction. Really you should be at home until the contractions get rather close and who is coaching you there? Your caregiver might be on vacation in Hawaii and then who is filling in? Doesn't your caregiver have a whole hall of pregnant women that he or she is tending to? Good birth planning programs take weeks to finish and entail a good amount of study and homework. Here are some good birthing classes. I very much recommend a doula for first births, home births, births in need of support, and for you and your loved ones to feel less stressed and more in enjoyment with your labor and birth. My husband and mom enjoyed the massages that my doula gave them.

The more prepared that you are and the more positive planning that you have put towards anything in life, will make it a better experience. Knowledge is key.

Are you going to or did you already circumcise your baby boy?

Like many parenting and health topics, circumcision is a very personal decision. Once it is done it will affect your boy for the rest of his life.

Kenyan boy taking part in is circumcision ceremony.
image: BBC
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7536892.stm

This is a non-judgemental page.

Researching circumcision is entertaining! It is traditionally a religious or cultural decision where the historical reasoning is conflicting. Some circumcised to increase sexual pleasure (now known as a myth) while others circumcised to decrease sexual pleasure and decrease masturbation.

The world is very polarized on this topic. Even within Kenya where I witnessed the circumcision ceremony of teenaged boys, the decision is tribal. Some tribes do it and some don't. In the United States, the rate of circumcision changes based on where you live. The west coast has low instances while the east coast has high instances of circumcision. My town is very divided. Most of the moms that I know chose not to circumcise but I know that there are many others that did.

Of the many moms that I know, I have met several with sons who have had botched circumcisions requiring pain and follow-up surgery months later. Some of these moms even told me that they didn't know that circumcision was optional at the hospital. 

How common is circumcision?

"The World Health Organization (WHO) has estimated that globally 30% of males aged 15 and over are circumcised, with almost 70% of these being Muslim. 

Male circumcision is most prevalent in the Muslim world (near-universal), parts of Southeast Asia and of Africa, the United States, the Philippines, Israel, and South Korea. In contrast, it is rare in Europe, parts of Southern Africa, and most of Asia and Oceania. In Latin America, prevalence is universally low. The WHO states that "there is generally little non-religious circumcision in Asia, with the exceptions of the Republic of Korea and the Philippines". Estimates for individual countries include less than 2% in Spain, Colombia and Denmark; between 0% and 7% in Finland; 3% in Cambodia; 7% in Brazil; 9% in Taiwan; and 13% in Australia....Citing three different data sources, most recent rates for the U.S. were 56.9% in 2008 (NHDS), 56.3% in 2008 (NIS), and 54.7% in 2010 (CDM)."  [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prevalence_of_circumcision]

Why circumcise?
The reasons I found are for religious reasons, or to "look like dad".

Why skip circumcision?
It is medically known that the foreskin is a nerve and that removing it decreases sexual pleasure. Despite conflicting claims Dr. Sears points out how there is no medical evidence of circumcision being helpful. The foreskin acts as a protective barrier like our eyelid. There are also the ethical questions of doing such a procedure without the child's consent.

History of Male Circumcision: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_male_circumcision

Myth vs. Fact: http://intactamerica.org/learnmore

What was your #1 reason to circumcise or not circumcise?

The Cord: To Bank or Not To Bank?

Moms are evenly divided on this fence! So many of us have been touched by a illness or fear the worst for our babies. The idea of banking the blood inside the umbilical cord after delivery to one day heal someone in your family in enticing. The cord blood is so amazing that there are benefits to letting your own child immediately receive the blood. What to do? Use it now or later or not at all?

Use it now
Some moms keep the umbilical cord attached until it drains of blood and stops pulsing to know that the baby has received the final nourishment. The NYTimes reported that "a new analysis has found that delaying clamping for at least a minute after birth, which allows more time for blood to move from the placenta, significantly improves iron stores and hemoglobin levels in newborns and does not increase the risks to mothers". Other moms enjoy a "lotus birth" where they keep the cord attached to the baby for around 10 days until it naturally falls off. Even ABC News covered Lotus Birth!

Use it later
If the umbilical cord is clamped and cut immediately after birth, a good amount of blood remains inside of the cord. The cord in this state contains priceless stem cells in their purest and most healing form. Some hospitals and birthing centers have access to public cord banks where you can donate the cord and know that it will immediately be used by someone who needs it. You can also privately "bank" the cord in the event that the baby or someone else in the family needs access to these stem cells. According to LifeBankUSA, "The ability of stem cells to save lives via cord blood banking has proven successful for replacing abnormal or diseased cells, and treating life-threatening blood disorders such as leukemia, lymphoma, and myeloma.  In fact, since 1988 stem cell transplants have been used to treat some 80 diseases." There is a giveaway taking place until the end of December where all you have to do is LIKE Life Bank USA on Facebook to be entered to win one of three Britax Marathon 70-G3 Convertible Car Seats. It is a great carseat and an easy entry. 

Click here to enter by liking the Facebook page.

How to Guarantee that your Baby will have a Higher I.Q.

As parents we all want to see our children reach their highest potential. We know that we cannot protect them from every danger, toxin, and heartache. We all want to make the decisions that will have the best long term outcome on our children.

Some moms and dads have known the secret to a higher I.Q. for thousands of years. Yet it comes as a news-breaker in papers such as the NYTimes when JAMA Pediatrics, a major mainstream medical journal, publishes a study about it. The World Health Organization recommends doing this for at least 2 years. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends doing it for at least 1 year. 

Breastfeeding 1+ years WILL increase your child's I.Q.

(for those who have already chosen the formula path, have adopted, or have serious medical issues I am in the process of writing a post on how to pick the healthiest formula so check back and don't feel left out!)

Below is the latest study including the results and conclusion (the important part). The outcome has taken into account factors such as socio-economics and parents education level. They are looking at exclusive breastfeeding (no formula/bottles) compared to just formula feeding for the first six months followed by then breastmilk and solids. If you need another reference, the World Health Organization already found the relationship between exclusive breastfeeding and higher I.Q. (and as adults are less likely to be overweight or diabetic).



Infant Feeding and Childhood Cognition at Ages 3 and 7 Years: Effects of Breastfeeding Duration and Exclusivity.
JAMA Pediatr. 2013 Jul 29. doi: 10.1001/jamapediatrics.2013.455.
Belfort MB, Rifas-Shiman SL, Kleinman KP, Guthrie LB, Bellinger DC, Taveras EM, Gillman MW, Oken E.Division of Newborn Medicine, Boston Children's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts.

IMPORTANCE Breastfeeding may benefit child cognitive development, but few studies have quantified breastfeeding duration or exclusivity, nor has any study to date examined the role of maternal diet during lactation on child cognition. 

OBJECTIVES To examine relationships of breastfeeding duration and exclusivity with child cognition at ages 3 and 7 years and to evaluate the extent to which maternal fish intake during lactation modifies associations of infant feeding with later cognition. 

DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS Prospective cohort study (Project Viva), a US prebirth cohort that enrolled mothers from April 22, 1999, to July 31, 2002, and followed up children to age 7 years, including 1312 Project Viva mothers and children. MAIN EXPOSURE Duration of any breastfeeding to age 12 months. 

MAIN OUTCOMES AND MEASURES Child receptive language assessed with the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test at age 3 years, Wide Range Assessment of Visual Motor Abilities at ages 3 and 7 years, and Kaufman Brief Intelligence Test and Wide Range Assessment of Memory and Learning at age 7 years. 

RESULTS Adjusting for sociodemographics, maternal intelligence, and home environment in linear regression, longer breastfeeding duration was associated with higher Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test score at age 3 years (0.21; 95% CI, 0.03-0.38 points per month breastfed) and with higher intelligence on the Kaufman Brief Intelligence Test at age 7 years (0.35; 0.16-0.53 verbal points per month breastfed; and 0.29; 0.05-0.54 nonverbal points per month breastfed). Breastfeeding duration was not associated with Wide Range Assessment of Memory and Learning scores. Beneficial effects of breastfeeding on the Wide Range Assessment of Visual Motor Abilities at age 3 years seemed greater for women who consumed 2 or more servings of fish per week (0.24; 0.00-0.47 points per month breastfed) compared with less than 2 servings of fish per week (-0.01; -0.22 to 0.20 points per month breastfed) (P = .16 for interaction). 

CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE Our results support a causal relationship of breastfeeding duration with receptive language and verbal and nonverbal intelligence later in life.

Related Posts:

Why Breastfeed? - Includes 10 steps to successful breastfeeding

Pumping at Work - It is the law!

Breastfeeding in Public - So much easier than dealing with bottles.

Parenting School 101 - Includes a great breastfeeding book to read!

Nursing Tea Recipe - One recipe for pregnancy, postpartum, and to increase milk supply.

VIDEO: How to Cloth Diaper

This is the real world, not Hollywood, but here goes my first video!  Here I am demonstrating how to cloth diaper using prefolds.  This is my very easy way of diapering where I only do one load of laundry per week!  Enjoy and don't forget to check out why I cloth diapered baby #3 and the details of cloth diapering the easy way with prefolds.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Uk975ujPXQ&feature=player_embedded

Cloth Diapers: The easy way

Baby #3 was born while I still had 3 kids aged 4 and under at home. I had to shave down daily tasks to a "survival" level yet I continued to cloth diaper my baby because I had discovered a great system. It is so easy that I had to share it with you. Here's a video of the diapers in action.

Disposable Diapers

Do you ever think about disposable diapers? They are made in a factory with a ton of chemicals and plastics then transported to your local store. What a carbon footprint! Oh wait, after they are used, they sit in a landfill for 450 years according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Yeah, yeah disposable diapers are not going to cause the human race to cease but it hardly feels like it helps our environment. I have heard arguments that cloth diapering is worse than disposable diapers because water is used to wash them.  Maybe if you wash daily but I wash weekly and there is no way that one load of wash comes anywhere near the environmental impact of making, transporting and sitting in a landfill for 450 years!

From a health point of view, disposable diapers are made of plastic and do not allow for fresh air to flow around the baby's skin which increases the chances of diaper rash. There are also all those perfumes and bleach rubbing against the baby's skin and we all know that everything on the skin is absorbed -- yuck!

Fancy Over-Designed Cloth Diapers

There are some great parents out there who have made beautiful cloth diapers that work just like a disposable diaper ("all-in-ones"). It is one piece and you put it on like a regular diaper. When it is dirty, you take the whole thing off and put it all in the diaper pail. This sounds nice, right? Well these diapers are around $20 each! A newborn goes through about 8-10 diapers a day and an older baby is at around 5 diapers a day. You would have to do laundry daily or have a huge stash of these in various sizes (although some brands have just come out with multi-size models). They are very thick so they take a long time to dry. They are usually made of fleece as the inner layer and this fabric often holds on to stink and causes you to have to do an extra "strip" washing regularly.  More work + more money + synthetic fabric against the baby = not for me.

Super Easy and Cheap Cloth Diapers

When I had a diaper service, I was introduced to the world of prefolds and I was sold. What is the easiest and cheapest way to cloth diaper?  Prefolds!  A prefold is a piece of 100% cotton fabric that has been folded to be most absorbent and is then folded again before put in a perfect fitting cover. Back in the day these diapers were pinned on babies then a horribly fitting plastic cover/bloomer was put on top. It was a horrible combination.  This is not what I am talking about.  This is how I diaper:

STEP 1: WASH COVERS
I wash covers in cold or warm water with regular laundry. This way I only need a 2 day supply (I reuse the same cover over and over until it is dirty or the end of the day). When I lived in an apartment without laundry in the building, I used to hand wash the covers. This took 1 minute in the bathroom since I would wash them while they were fresh.

STEP 2: WASH PREFOLD DIAPERS
I wash prefold diapers weekly. First they get a gentle wash rinse with no detergent, then they get a heavy cycle on hot with Rock-n-green laundry detergent. I have hard water so I use the Hard Rock variety. When they come out of the wash, I fold the prefolds into thirds (or fourths if they are huge) and put them in the top drawer of the changing table so they are ready to go.

Prefold folded in thirds

Prefold folded in forths

STEP 3: DIAPER!

Diaper changes are the same as with disposable except that I have to first put a prefold on top of a cover. When I have a sitter, I put the prefold already in the cover so it is ready to go. I reuse the same cover all day or until it is dirty. Diapers are put in a covered pail until laundry day. I use the Diaper Champ with a homemade reusable PUL liner and it blocks odor perfectly.

That was easy!  Breast-milk only bowels that occur during the first 6 months do not require any special ringing. When the bowels become solid with solid foods then the bowels must first be flushed whether you are using a disposable diaper or a cloth diaper. When using cloth I sometimes put a little piece of fleece on top of the prefold to make the bowel roll off easier into the toilet. I simply cut fleece to the size that I wanted. There is no sewing required with fleece.

You didn't miss the VIDEO of me cloth diapering did you?

10 Ways to Increase your Energy Naturally

Have you felt that afternoon or mid-morning lack of energy? Do you reach for something sweet or caffeinated to give you a jolt? That's right, we all know it. As good as they taste, those sweets and caffeinated foods/beverages give you a cheap thrill of energy then they drain you the rest of the day. Here are 10 ways to increase you energy without sugar or caffeine from my days at Integrative Nutrition (amended for you moms):

1) Reduce or eliminate caffeine: The ups and downs of caffeine include dehydration and blood sugar ups and downs, making mood swings more frequent. If you need something to get you going in the morning try some hot lemon water, a decaf or herbal tea or a weak coffee/tea until you adjust.

2) Drink water: Most Americans are chronically dehydrated. Pregnancy and breastfeeding requires you to consume even more water. Before you go to sugar or caffeine, have a glass of water and wait a few minutes to see what happens. Caution: Soft drinks are now America’s number one source of added sugar. Are you having trouble remembering to drink water? Buy yourself a reusable glass or stainless steel water bottle that makes it convenient and fun.

3) Eat dark leafy green vegetables: Green is associated with spring, the time of renewal and refreshing, vital energy. Greens are full of vitamins and nutrients and great for improving circulation, lifting the spirit, purifying the blood and strengthening the immune system. Broccoli, collards, bok choy, kale, mustard greens, broccoli rabe, arugula and dandelion greens are some of the many to choose from.

4) Use gentle sweets: Avoid sugar and chemicalized artificial sweeteners. Use gentle sweeteners like maple syrup, brown rice syrup, agave nectar and liquid stevia. Also eat sweet vegetables such as yams, carrots and beets especially at lunch.

5) Get physical activity: Start with simple activities, like walking or yoga—start with 10 minutes a day and increase. Make this a standard part of your day. Simple exercises like walking and stretching can be done long before a post-partum mom gets the "okay" from her caregiver to do heavier exercise. Park or get off the train a few extra blocks from your office. Walk the kids to school instead of driving. Do family yoga in the evening.

6) Get more sleep, rest and relaxation: When you are tired or stressed your body will crave energy. Is pregnancy discomfort keeping you up? Do you have a baby waking every few hours for a feeding? As much as possible, go to sleep early and gently mold your baby's sleeping habits to allow for more restful nights. If you need down-time during the day, find a way to make it happen. Hire help if needed.

7) Evaluate the amount of animal food you eat: Eating too much meat, dairy, chicken and eggs can lead to low energy. So can eating too little! Experiment. Respect your body’s individuality.

8) Take time for yourself: Find activities that restore your energy, such as a walk, a bath, a museum, a movie or whatever you enjoy, and schedule a weekly date with yourself to do these things!

9) Get in touch with your spirituality: We are spiritual beings in a physical world. Find ways to get in touch with your spiritual side, be it meditating, dancing, drawing, church, temple or being in nature.

10) Get rid of relationships that drain you: People can drain you of your energy. It doesn’t mean that they are bad, but it is good to notice who drains you and why. See if you can transform those relationships by communicating and setting boundaries, or end the relationship.